The Universal Solvent
by Gogol
Summary: "Here's the thing about obliterating all flesh: it can take some time." Aziraphale and Crowley talk about some things and fail to talk about others while the Flood is still in the process of, well, flooding.


In the 1652nd year of God's Creation, the angel Aziraphale was feeding the ducks on the shore of the Nile.

They flocked around his ankles and made noises that were, Aziraphale thought, practically human(1). Aziraphale quite liked ducks, although if he were the sort of angel who thought that His design could be improved upon he'd have said that the design could have benefited from a little more in the way of a sphincter muscle.

Instead he beamed at them and tried to wipe his sandals off discreetly while opening a second bag of- well, probably better to imagine it was bread. The ducks enjoyed it, anyway.

His sandals went: _squish_. It's a bit difficult to wipe sandals off on mud.

Perhaps, he considered, it was time to try hovering again.

Before he could come to any decision on the matter, a stone tablet fell out of the cloud-smothered sky and landed scant inches from his (slightly damp) toes with a thud, effectively derailing his train of thought, blowing it up, and selling the pieces for scrap metal. It did not deter the ducks much. Two were already investigating the scorched earth around the tablet's resting place on the off chance that it had turned into bread while their attention had been diverted.

Aziraphale managed to retrieve the tablet before they could move on to it, but only just.

It was quite heavy. Stone tablets often are. Aziraphale frowned out this one. Cuneiform was of course an improvement over the old way of doing things, which was to drop the information into your head no matter what else you happened to be working on at the time and to Hell(2) with the consequences, and naturally he appreciated the fact that they had taken his suggestion about the writing business, but goodness, you would think they'd have gotten his memo about papyrus. Although- he'd actually done the memo about papyrus on papyrus, his little joke, and it was possible, he realized now, that they'd mistaken it for one of the wadded balls of rubbish Michael would insist on lobbing at the waste receptacles instead of getting up and walking over to dispose of the stuff like a civilized person(3).

Aziraphale shook his head at the manners of some archangels, glanced around guiltily in case anyone had seen him, and read the message.

When he had finished he went back to the beginning to read it again.

He looked up. Clouds were gathering, already, like housewives converging on the scene of a crime.

He shivered.

In the back of his brain, a little voice was saying that it was a good thing after all about the cuneiform. His collection was all on hard clay and slabs of rock and other conspicuously waterproof substances and he had Heaven's resolutely old-fashioned mindset to thank for that, didn't he.

Yes.

One of the ducks, perturbed by the sudden staunching of the flow of, er, 'bread', bit his heel. Aziraphale didn't notice.

He sat down, rather abruptly. A cup of tea materialized in his free hand. He hadn't intended for that to happen, but lately it seemed to be this body's automatic reaction to stress. Good old Shennong, he thought. Good old Shennong, whose dynasty was shortly going to be washed from the surface of the Earth.

"Oh, dear," he said, quietly, to the empty air. The empty air did not reply.

The ducks, disgusted by his inattention, began waddling back into the water. He drank the tea. It made him feel a little better, although not much.

Aziraphale waited.

After a while, it started to rain.

(1) The human would have had to be either very old or very young, and easily amused, of course. Equipping them with a whoopie cushion probably wouldn't have hurt either.

(2) Well, not always. Sometimes just to the one corner of Purgatory with all the filing cabinets. But mostly to Hell, the poor dears. Petty bureaucratic interruptions in the middle of your scheduled divine ecstasy can make the most virtuous soul doubt.

(3) Every office space has one of these. Michaels, that is. Not civilized persons.

Two days later, two men stood huddled under a tree whose single redeeming feature was its position a few hundred yards from a boat.

Aziraphale had come to see the boat. Crowley, as far as he could tell, had come- or rather, followed him- mainly to ask some panicky questions. Aziraphale secretly welcomed the distraction: having come, and seen, and made absolutely certain that he was not going to be out of the job just yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, he felt if anything more discontented than ever about the whole affair.

"What _is_ it?" Crowley hissed.

At least, he probably intended it as a hiss: it came out as more of a splutter. As it turned out, the drowned rat look didn't suit his human incarnation any more than it had his rat one.

"A boat," said Aziraphale.

Crowley glared. "Not that." He pointed up. "_That_."

"Rain," said Aziraphale, helpfully.

The portion of Crowley's expression that was visible from under his hood could have seriously inconvenienced any ducks in the vicinity, if there had been ducks in the vicinity. He opened his mouth.

Aziraphale decided that letting the Enemy have a vital state secret that would be old news by the end of the month was probably preferable to listening to some of Crowley's special brand of creative and often, in Aziraphale's opinion, unnecessarily personal blasphemy, and continued, "A flood, actually. To destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life."

Crowley's mouth remained open.

Aziraphale pulled the tablet out of a handy pocket in the raw firmament and passed it to over. "It's all here. Rather clearly explained, too."

"That's new," said Crowley, but his heart obviously wasn't in it. He took the tablet.

Aziraphale, who had the words memorized, mouthed along as he read, even down to the subclauses and Gabriel's annotation.

"...oh."

"Yes," Aziraphale said, glumly.

"What, everything?"

"Yes."

"Man?"

"Yes."

"Beast?"

"Yes."

"The fowls of the air?"

"Somehow."

"Creeping thing?"

"If you keep that up, yes, rather sooner than the others."

"All right, all right, no need to get prickly." He paused. "What about bearded old bastards with bloody enormous boats?"

"There's only the one," Aziraphale said, hugging himself.

"Right," said Crowley, bitterly.

They stood for a time without speaking, the uncomfortable silence broken only by the plopplopplop of the rain, and the muffled organic noises made by the animals in the boat, and Noah, shouting to his sons. ("_Faster._") Aziraphale watched Crowley out of the corner of his eye. The demon's face had gone unreadably reptilian.

They were lucky to be on high ground. The humans splashing through the inch of water at the base of the valley's bowl looked fragmented and pale, like the better class of ghosts.

"So these are it," Crowley said. "The righteous in their generation. Off to a nice fresh start on a very cramped floating Eden. Are they renaming the livestock?"

"I think that's a job that only gets done once."

"Really? Lazy buggers, humans, I've always said so." He tilted his head and lifted the soaked edge of his hood a bit. Aziraphale caught a glimpse of one brass-colored eye.

"That one's an adulteress," he said, pointing to one of the women.

Aziraphale said: "Not for long."

The demon blinked.

Then he burst out laughing, a little wildly. "Not for long," he repeated, between hiccups. "_Not for long_. That's a good one, that-"

He doubled over. He was wheezing a bit, actually, and making sounds, high and strange. In the valley the woman he had pointed out stopped and cocked her head and shuddered.

Aziraphale, who'd briefly been affronted but had given up after the first minute or so of the laughter, wondered whether the thing to do would be to offer him a handkerchief; he was beginning to go curiously... soggy around the edges. There was a vague suggestion of maggots moving under his dark skin.

"Pull yourself together," Aziraphale said, uneasily, "there's a good chap."

Crowley didn't respond, unless the gurgle counted. Aziraphale shifted from foot to foot. The humans were starting to notice them, and Gabriel did get so tetchy about unscheduled angelic visitations, and he was no longer sure why he had thought this was a good idea. Any of it. It was a long walk back to his little shop in Egypt, and there were some small matters of business to be cleared up. He had seen what there was to be seen. And so on.

"Perhaps," Aziraphale said, "we could continue this conversation at some more convenient time?"

Crowley slid gently down to the ground, his back to the tree trunk, laughing.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Aziraphale said, and set out into the dark. Behind him he thought he heard a pop, and things squirming over the earth.

He went home.

Another three days passed. The rain fell, not hard, but with the unrelenting smugness of someone who's getting paid for this.

For his part, Aziraphale paid his debts and collected on his loans, like a responsible shopkeeper, and encouraged every human he met to invest in boats, or seaworthy crafts, or, failing that, a good solid log and some reading material(1). He was putting a watertight seal on the chest full of his few papyrus manuscripts when Crowley banged into his shop, bringing with him through the doorway a gust of wind, water, and- Aziraphale sighed- maggots. Just as well his things were all packed up.

"So," Crowley said, with the air of someone who has thought just long and hard enough to get a really satisfying conclusion out of it and has now stopped thinking much at all, "adulteress or no, basically, I won this round, right?"

"Sorry?"

"Well," Crowley said, "I mean, the wickedness of man, and the imagination in the thoughts of their hearts being evil continually, that's me, isn't it? I ought to get a commendation."

"Yes, in a way," Aziraphale said. "And, then again, no."

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

"It was... actually almost certainly my people, I'm afraid, who were responsible for this."

Crowley crossed his arms skeptically.

"No, really," Aziraphale said, with an apologetic smile. "There was all that interbreeding, as you know, and- well."

Crowley stared. Then comprehension dawned.

"You must be joking."

"I'm afraid not. Humans aren't that violent on their own(3), you know. With angel blood in them, though..." Aziraphale shrugged, and spread his hands.

Crowley made as if to protest, then paused. "I did notice that wars were getting a lot easier, these days. I put it down to the increase in cities, but... I suppose angels' brats running around makes more sense, really."

"Quite."

"Damn."

"Most of them were, I gather, from Gabriel's commentary on the 'sons of God' bit." The archangel had been viciously ironic. Aziraphale hadn't even known archangels were allowed to be that ironic. It was curiously impressive.

"...what?"

"Damned, that is. The angels involved, and their offspring with them."

"Typical," Crowley said, disgustedly. "Huh. Stealing my thunder here and down Below too, I don't doubt."

"Probably," Aziraphale agreed. "That sort will do anything for attention."

Crowley said, "Yeah. Bastards." Then he gave Aziraphale a deeply suspicious look. "Are you allowed to say that kind of thing?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." Crowley bared his teeth in a gesture that resembled a smile in much the same way as a killer whale resembles a koi. Which is to say, the bones involved were more or less alike.

Aziraphale chose not to dignify this with a reply.

"What's in that box?" he asked, abruptly.

Before Aziraphale could answer he moved. Away from the doorway, and towards the lonely cedar chest.

Aziraphale hurriedly got in his way. "Don'ttouchthatyou'llmessuptheblessings,

" he blurted.

Crowley looked mystified. "Pardon?"

Aziraphale thought fast.

"I said, er, how about a cup of tea?"

"Tea?" said Crowley, diverted. Aziraphale didn't actually sigh for relief, but it was a close thing.

"It's, er, a hot beverage," he said. "It's very nice. You make it by dropping the leaves of a certain bush into boiling water until the water changes color."

Crowley, to whom this sounded uncomfortably familiar, said, tentatively, "And then?"

"Then you drink it."

"Ah?"

"It has a very soothing effect," Aziraphale tried.

"Are you going to poison mine?" Crowley asked, carefully.

Aziraphale did work his way up to affronted this time. He sniffed. "Of course not. That would be a waste of good tea."

"Hm," Crowley said, and moved to the low table, and sat on one of the cushions. "Okay."

Aziraphale went outside to fill a pot with rainwater, which took a terribly short time. Back inside, he put it on the hearth, which was already merrily burning, if also somewhat surprised.

"What are you doing?" said Crowley.

Aziraphale said, slowly and clearly, "Boil-ing some wat-er."

"I _meant_," said Crowley, "why aren't you just miracling it hot?"

"That wouldn't be doing it properly. It's all part of enjoying the full tea experience," said Aziraphale, with all the assurance of someone who was completely and utterly alone the last time they made a cuppa out of raw firmament.

"The what?"

"The tea experience."

Crowley decided that some things just weren't worth pursuing. He twiddled his thumbs. He was quite enjoying thumbs.

"So," he said, when the silence had plunged through awkward and out the other side into something that might almost have passed for comfortable, at least if you had the standards of comfort of the average Egyptian peasant, "this is the tea experience, is it?"

It was probably just as well for him that almost before he'd finished speaking the pot began to bubble in earnest. Aziraphale shot him a poisonous look but busied himself getting his crockery off the coals and onto the table. He set it down with what Crowley felt was unnecessary force; scaldingly hot water splashed everywhere, and only rewriting the local laws of physics saved his expensive, dark-dyed cloak from an impromptu wash. Which had been true for almost four days now, admittedly, but it seemed unfair that he couldn't escape further threats of dampening when he'd actually gone so far as to enter an angel's lair, and everything. If angels had lairs, anyway. Eyries?

"Cups!" said Aziraphale, holding up two small bowls he had excavated while Crowley was deep in metaphysical contemplation.

"Yes?" said Crowley politely.

"Leaves," said Aziraphale, brandishing a small sack of something dry and loose, by the sound of it. He dropped a pinch into each clay vessel, and pressed the smaller one into Crowley's hand.

"Aha," said Crowley, feeling that he was expected to say something.

"And water," said Aziraphale, with some satisfaction. He poured. Crowley did not flinch, of which fact he was proud. It helped that he'd been paying close attention to the water since Aziraphale collected it, of course. You couldn't be too careful.

The steam rose in transparent clouds. The water did, as promised, change color. It turned green, actually. Crowley frowned at it.

"Is something wrong?" said Aziraphale.

"No," said Crowley. Which was the problem, really. It was green. He wasn't used to boiling water turning _green_ after use. It jarred.

"Well, go on," said Aziraphale.

"You first."

Aziraphale didn't roll his eyes, but it was a close thing. He tipped the bowl up with both hands. Crowley watched his throat move, to make sure he was swallowing.

"Theoretically," said Aziraphale, wiping his lips, "if I were trying to poison you, which I'm not, I could just miraculously eliminate it from inside my stomach, you know."

"Yes, but that's disgusting," said Crowley, reasonably.

"Not as disgusting as the alternative," sighed the angel. "Go _on._ Have a taste."

Crowley had a taste.

When he had finished making faces, he said, "You're sure this isn't lethal?"

"Angels don't lie," Aziraphale said in exasperation.

"Bollocks," said Crowley, "what about in the Garden, eh? Don't think I didn't hear you talking to Him. 'Oooh, yes, misplaced it, forget my own head next.' Hah!"

"I did lose my head," Aziraphale protested weakly. "Er."

As if on cue, thunder rolled, and white light shone briefly through the cracks around the door. And under that they could just make out voices raised in panic and anger.

Someone screamed. Then someone stopped screaming.

Crowley had another taste. It grew on you, he considered. Like some kind of prickly vine. The sort that got sap in unwelcome places. But there was no denying the warmth was pleasant.

"Wouldn't be so bad with some..." he fumbled "...goat milk added. I suppose. Maybe some honey."

"Must you always pervert what is pure and good?"

"Well," Crowley said, "yes?"

Aziraphale harrumphed, but couldn't, Crowley noted, smugly, actually argue the point.

They sipped without talking for a while.

"So," Crowley said, "that box- it's things you want to save, isn't it."

"Papyrus scrolls," Aziraphale muttered.

Crowley remembered, belatedly, that Aziraphale had a bit of a thing about books(4). "Just papyrus scrolls?" he said.

"What d'you mean, _just_?" said Aziraphale.

"Not that that's not a, um, a fine choice," Crowley said hastily. "I was only wondering if you were going to put anything else perishable in as well."

Aziraphale looked puzzled. "Such as?"

"...myrrh?" said Crowley. "Silks? These tea leaves?"

"Nasty stuff, myrrh," said Aziraphale, but the other items on the list gave him pause.

Crowley smiled encouragingly.

"I'm not meant to get attached to material things," he said. His tone said, somewhat more loudly: I already have.

"It's just a little box, angel," said Crowley. "It's not as if I'm suggesting you try and save the world."

Aziraphale laughed, not very happily.

"Maybe a few tea leaves," he said, as if to himself. "And seeds."

"Yes, and what are the arrangements for the plantlife like, anyway?" said Crowley. It was something that had been bothering him.

"Sorry?"

"The plantlife. You know, all the growing green innocent parts of His creation that won't necessarily benefit from a year-long soaking."

"They won't?" said Aziraphale. "I thought plants needed... water."

"So do humans," Crowley observed.

"Oh."

"Yes."

Aziraphale refilled both their cups, and consulted his tablet.

"Nothing," he said.

"No mention of them at all?" said Crowley, a little incredulously.

Aziraphale shook his head.

"Huh," said Crowley.

"Perhaps the seeds in the earth will, er, lie in wait," said Aziraphale, "and flower when the water has gone again. Um."

"Sure," said Crowley. He was staring at the dark mass of sodden tea leaves at the bottom of his bowl. Aziraphale offered him the water pot, but he ignored it. "It won't be very good for the soil, though."

"You could perhaps do something with an urn," said Aziraphale, thinking of something he had seen in China once. "Filled with mud, or whatnot. And put the plant in that. Yes?"

"Perhaps," said Crowley, because Aziraphale seemed to expect an answer. He stuck a finger in, and moved his tea leaves around a bit. The first shape he idly pieced together an apple, although it came out looking more like a deformed fig. It was followed by a pair of sunglasses, although since sunglasses wouldn't be invented for four thousand years he mistook them for some kind of boat.

"Some humans are using them to see the future," said Aziraphale. "Tea leaves, that is."

"Humans will see the future in anything," said Crowley. "Sometimes even in what's right in front of them."

Aziraphale nodded. He looked tired, Crowley thought, and poured himself another cupful, and drained it. Dregs and all.

(1) A selfless act on his part, since many of them had the nerve to follow the conversation up by actually coming to his shop and trying to buy aforementioned reading material from him. The ingratitude of it stung; millennia later he would still be shuddering at the memory of their hopeful, predatory faces, breathing all over texts that were worth more than their weight in gold(2), as if they expected him to sell to just anyone, without even so much as a note from the nearest holy man in the way of character references.

(2) Stone tablets were _heavy_.

(3) Technically accurate.

(4) Cooling his heels after the Cain debacle, Crowley had spent a decade making the understatement catch on with the vague idea of getting a commendation for all the nasty surprises, right up until Aziraphale pointed out that what he was mostly doing was adding a little humility to everyone's day. After that, Crowley practiced the art only in the privacy of his own head, and comforted himself with the thought that in a few millennia humans would make bragging a sport.

Here's the thing about obliterating all flesh: it can take some time. It may not be a task on the same scale as, say, an apocalypse proper, which doesn't stop at mere erosion and tends to actually put out the sun rather than merely tucking it cleverly away behind dark clouds, piled deep as oceans, but it nevertheless generates a certain amount of fuss.

Also, humans have a way of overreacting to a spot of bad weather. They invent games like Parcheesi, or catch pneumonia, or make war on the neighboring tribe, whose god is a thunder god and who they always _thought_ looked a bit trigger-happy.

The waters covered the face of the Earth. They weren't the only things.

And the slick sound of hooves pounding over water echoed through the dark and stormy night.

Crowley's hands began to shake after evening had given way to morning. He put them firmly on the tabletop, but this had no effect, other than to make the tabletop shake, too. Aziraphale glanced up at him reproachfully. Aziraphale was also vibrating, though, so Crowley was not impressed.

"Nonlethal, eh?" he said.

"Well, I've never had quite this much in one go before," said Aziraphale.

Crowley looked at him sideways.

"What are we doing, exactly?"

"Drinking tea, because tea makes things better," said Aziraphale, promptly.

"Not that. I mean, yes, that, but-" Crowley gesticulated helplessly, attempting to include in one expressive sweep of arm the conversation, the stone tablet, the entirety of almost two thousand years of work on this bloody planet, and _then_, only then, if he was feeling ambitious, the looming mystery of the tea.

"Ah," said Aziraphale. "To that, I'd have to say-" He frowned. "Dunno. What else do you have to do? I haven't been contacted by my superiors since it began." And the thing was, he really, really hadn't.

Crowley, who hadn't either, frowned at the heavy grain of the table's wood. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. It just seems a bit odd. I'm a demon, after all, I have a reputation to maintain."

"A reputation for not drinking tea?"

"It just doesn't seem right."

"Wrong, you mean."

"Exactly! Er."

Aziraphale looked to the door. It was shaking, possibly out of a desire to fit in.

"There ought to be... something... something to do with grapes," Crowley continued, uncertainly. He squinted at the ceiling. "A beverage. With grapes."

"Of course," said Aziraphale. Not only was the door shaking, it was shaking because someone had knocked on it. Aziraphale bit his lip. "Will you excuse me for a moment?"

"Oh, no, please, interrupt my prophecying, I don't mind, I'm only ripping open the veil of the present, here," said Crowley.

"Thanks," said Aziraphale, and went to the door.

On the other side were rain, and a woman, and a horse. The woman Aziraphale recognized vaguely; he had a feeling he'd glimpsed her before, though he couldn't quite work out where. She was painfully vivid in the gray gloom: like a wound in the skin of the sky.

She wore a full suit of copper armor with all the grace and confidence of someone who'd never heard of superconductivity. And she was holding his sword.

"You were the Angel of the Eastern Gate, right?" she said.

"Yes," said Aziraphale, dazedly. "Although I've since been reassigned," he felt compelled to add. "To, er, here. Er."

She smiled at him like the cat who's got the canary but not, alas, the mouthwash.

"Hi. I'm War."

"Ah," said Aziraphale.

"The personification."

"I'll take your word for it."

"I just thought I'd stop by," she said. "I was curious about you, and it's easiest to track you while I have this. Apparently I only get to use it on special occasions, but whoo-_eeeeee_, is it worth the wait."

To punctuate her, ah, point, she lunged and slashed at his stomach, describing an arc of bright flame in the air. Aziraphale cleverly avoided discorporation by virtue of falling over.

"So," she said, cheerfully, "thanks."

"You're... welcome," he said. "Special occasions?"

"The ending of worlds," she said. "This is the first, so we're still, you know, getting the hang of it, but me and some of my colleagues, we ride out. It is written."

"It is?" Aziraphale said, doubtfully.

"No," she said. "But it will be."

She lifted the blade to eye level. The flames reflected in her eyes were almost indistinguishable from the hot orange of her irides, really.

"You gave this to them," she said. "You gave _them_ to _me_."

Her smile widened.

Aziraphale staggered back to his feet, and sneaked a look over her shoulder. In what had been the street, water parted around bodies, and reddened, and then cleared again. There was pinkish foam sliding into his shop, over the front step. Locking up inside his shop and sitting tight until floating loose was more practical had seemed like an excellent plan, he thought.

"Yes," he said. "Well."

"I owe you one," she said, seriously. "Remind me to buy you a drink, some time when drinks have been invented."

This, at least, Aziraphale obviously had the more complete information on. "Actually, drinks have been invented," he said. "Why, I was just enjoying a cup of tea when you called."

War regarded him with something akin to pity.

"Right," she said. "Sorry, I meant, uh, a specific kind of drink. You'll know it when you see it."

She patted him on the shoulder. He did his best not to flinch, or lean into the motion.

"Must be off now- havoc to wreak, you know. But sometime when I'm off work, I'll show you what I mean."

She mounted her horse, and suddenly Aziraphale could see three other riders, trotting past. War joined them. Once out of the light from inside his shop became a silhouette indistinguishable from her fellows except for a few (and exceedingly pleasant) details of her outline. It wasn't much of a relief, but it was something.

And there was also this: Aziraphale could have sworn that the rider at the front of the little party turned his head. He could have sworn that the lamplight flashed off pale bone.

He could not have sworn that the blue spark in the pit of the left eyesocket vanished for a second in a strange parody of a human wink, but it did, anyway.

Aziraphale closed the door.

"Well," said Crowley, behind him, "that was interesting. Bit of a cock-up, really, though. The first apocalypse before the first apocalyptic prophecy? All because beings of pure virtue couldn't keep it in their pants?"

Aziraphale looked at him.

"I think," Aziraphale said, "I think perhaps we should go and do our jobs."

"We don't have jobs, at the moment," said Crowley. "Isn't that right? We're here for show, more or less."

Aziraphale took a deep breath. "Our missions, then."

"Is it a mission with demons?" said Crowley. "I feel like it ought to be an, an, I don't know-"

"Shut up, please," said Aziraphale. Crowley bristled, but he was going too quickly and too desperately to care, now. "It's very simple. You can go and tempt, and I can go and thwart, you know, at least until they've finished dying and moved on to being dead. And that way we'll keep busy, and things will even out. That's common sense."

Crowley said, "This world's _ending_. Besides Noah's kin, these people are all doomed."

Aziraphale spread his hands. They'd stopped quivering, mostly, although he still sloshed a bit when he moved.

"Best time, isn't it?"

Crowley looked back at him.

"Yeah, I was getting sick of tea, too," he said. "Grapes, angel, I'm telling you."

"Mm, yes, naturally," said Aziraphale; and they stepped out of his shop, and into the deluge. 


End file.
